ARTICLES ABOUT GREATER CHICAGO BY DATE - PAGE 2

The greater Chicago area's economy over the last decade took a heavy toll on wages for middle-income workers, the Brookings Institution found in a census-data study released Sunday. The middle-wage workers in the Chicago area and nearby parts of Indiana and Wisconsin earned $19.58 per hour in 2008, down 8.1 percent from 2000, Brookings found in an evaluation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The Chicago area now ranks near the bottom among the nation's 100 largest metro areas in terms of changes to middle-income wages, tied with two others at 96th.

Frances E. Teggart, 78, at rest Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. Beloved wife of the lateStephen Teggart; loving mother of Debbie (John) Flader and Steve (Cindy) Teggart; proud grandmother of Becki and Ryan Flader and Noel (Simon) Roberts; cherished sister of Betty Roach, Corky (Kork)Korkowski, Fina (Bob) Moeller, the lateDolores Work and the late EstherHelmboldt; and dear aunt to many nieces and nephews. Frances was a devoted wife and mother. She always put her family first, she instilled in them the values she held so dear and lived by. They were life's most valuable lessons passed on to those she loved so dearly.

Robert W. Strube spent his life surrounded by fresh food and made it his mission to do everything he could to see that people didn't go hungry. Mr. Strube was one of the founders of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, started 30 years ago in a stall he set aside at his South Water Market headquarters. It now stockpiles food in a 268,000-square-foot warehouse on the Southwest Side and serves a half-million people in Cook County each year. Mr. Strube, 91, died on Thursday, Jan. 14, at his Glencoe home, said his son, Robert Jr. He had suffered from various maladies, but an exact cause of death was not clear.

You can put your fists down, Chicago. The "Jersey Shore" invasion has been put on hold. All of tonight's highly anticipated "Jersey Shore" appearances have been canceled. That means no "Snooki" at Manor, no "J-WOWW" at RiNo and no Pauly D. and Mike "The Situation" at Lumen. Lumen received an e-mail from Pauly D. and Mike's booking agent at 12:25 p.m. Friday saying, "Due to last minute media and network commitments in Los Angeles, the scheduled appearance of Mike "The Situation" and DJ Pauly D at Lumen in Chicago for Friday, January 15 has been postponed."

A rule of thumb for carnivorous journalists: ALWAYS attend events involving 44,000 pounds of pork products. At worst, bacon samples; at best, you might finally have a chance to use terms like "hamtastic" or "porksplosion." With that in mind, a journey to the Greater Chicago Food Depository on Tuesday showed a massive donation of ground pork, bacon and sausage being gratefully accepted. The Illinois Pork Producers Association, the Illinois Corn Marketing Board and the Illinois Soybean Association -- an agricultural trifecta -- joined forces for a much-needed injection of protein into the state's food pantry pipeline.

The trove of food on the loading dock of a Countryside Jewel supermarket on a recent Friday morning would make many nutritious meals. Fresh bread and buns. Bags of spinach and carrots. And lots of meat straight from the cooler: loin steaks, ground turkey, chicken wings, sausage. All of it would have been landfill-bound if not for the Greater Chicago Food Depository's food rescue program. Instead, by the end of that Friday, those groceries and much more perfectly edible food went to food banks across Chicago.

Eboo Patel's earliest opportunity to find common ground with people of other faiths involved hot dogs. Embarrassed at age 6 that he had to haul halal hot dogs to a friend's party, he sneaked into the kitchen to hand his kosher franks to the hostess. There, he discovered the Jewish kids doing the same. That would be the first of many interfaith encounters for Patel, 34, the founder of Chicago's Interfaith Youth Core and a front man for the Obama administration's renewed focus on interfaith relations.